Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for President joins Thom Hartmann. Part of the reason why there is so much bickering and gridlock in Washington is because the US government is a two-party system. How would our democracy be different with a third major party – and could the Green Party be that party?

So the conventions are in the books, and we’re two months away from the election. We’re two months away from Americans having an ultimate choice – vote for the Democrat or vote for the Republican. Actually…that’s not really much of a choice at all. In fact – other Democracies around the world would laugh at us if we claimed that a vote between one of two major parties here was ACTUALLY a legitimate choice. The truth is – a two-party system isn’t really that Democratic at all. And most of the other Democracies on the planet know that – that’s why they’ve reformed their elections to prevent a two-party duopoly from taking over their representative governments.

Did you know there are six political parties represented in the German Congress – the Bundestag – and even more parties represented in state parliaments around Germany – including the Pirate Party? Australia, too, has six parties represented in their parliament. In the Italian Parliament as well – there’s six major parties represented – and more than two dozen smaller parties that are represented in some way as well. Brazil has 15 parties represented in Congress. Heck – Israel’s Parliament has like 18 parties in it. …